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Venus Revealed: A New Look Below The Clouds Of Our Mysteriious Twin Planet
"Grinspoon clearly loves the subject of this exemplary work, the unfolding of our knowledge of 'Earth's Twin.'...His book is full of quieky facts, references to popular culture, clever sililes, and inventive and revealing metaphors and analogies. Even the footnotes are entertaining". -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Hardcover
First published February 1, 1997
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July 12, 2016
_Venus Revealed_ by David Harry Grinspoon is a well-written, witty, thoroughly researched book on our nearest planetary neighbor, the planet Venus, often thought of as Earth's twin due to its roughly same size and mass. Grinspoon covered the history of human perception of the planet, the observation of Venus by scientists from the ground through the centuries, what the amateur astronomer can see and learn about the planet, the saga of the numerous probes to orbit the planet as well as it enter its atmosphere and even land on its surface,current understandings of the atmosphere and geology of Venus, and speculations on whether or not Venus has or had life and the future of human exploration of the planet. There are two inserts in the book, one a color insert that included a color image of the surface of Venus made by the Soviet _Venera 13_ lander in March 1982 as well as several global and regional topographic maps made by the _Pioneer Venus Orbiter_ and _Magellan_, and a black and white insert which included more Soviet lander images of the ground of Venus as well as numerous close-ups taken by _Magellan_ of a wide variety of Venusian surface features. In the text of the book itself I really liked the various diagrams included, including schematics of the sulfur cycle on Venus and a diagram of typical cloud structure. _Magellan_ images are dominant in the book, an extraordinary space probe that peeled back the "bright, unyielding clouds" with "gentle radar fingers," revealing massive amounts of new information for Venus scientists to ponder and debate over.
Venus has long attracted human attention, as it is the brightest object in the night sky after the full moon. Though the planet was noticed by virtually every human culture, no civilization paid it more mind than the Classic Maya (A.D. 300-900). They felt they owed their very existence to Venus (whom they called Kukulcan) - a debt that they paid back in human sacrifices - and based their entire calendar on the 260-day Venus appearance interval. Mayan astronomers were able to chart the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of Venus in the night skies with incredible accuracy, so much that the Mayan Venus Calendar has an error of only two hours in five hundred years of elapsed time.
The "solid citadel of clouds" that protected Venus from observation made it into a "tabula rasa," a blank slate that was inscribed by the wishes and dreams of observers for centuries. Grinspoon documented the many speculations about Venus being a swamp or ocean world, referencing both the serious speculations of astronomers such as Percival Lowell and the flights of fancy of popular literature and film. So little was known about the planet that even its rate of rotation wasn't resolved until 1962, when Earth-based radar images established that one day on Venus equaled 117 Earth days (and that it rotated in a backward or retrograde direction, with the sun rising in the west and setting in the east). Passive radio observations in 1956 that showed the planet emitting massive amounts of microwave radiation lead to the first real understanding of just how hot Venus was, as researchers began to infer that this was heat radiation from the surface, eventually establishing the surface temperature at 900 degrees Fahrenheit (so hot that an observer on the Venusian surface at night could see thanks to the glowing of the red-hot ground).
I enjoyed his coverage of the Venusian atmosphere the most of anything in the book. Though the planet-wide cloud cover looks basically bright and featureless even from orbit, images taken with ultraviolet filters have revealed that the atmosphere is dynamic and volatile, an intricate and complex swirl of high-contrast, fast-moving tiny splotches and huge, planet-wide streaks. The identity of this material, so dark in theultraviolet portion of the spectrum that its it responsible for absorbing nearly half the solar energy received by Venus, is still unknown and is simply called the unknown ultraviolet absorber. Its existence though has allowed scientists to study and model patterns of atmospheric circulation, an atmosphere that at the upper levels circles the planet at 200 miles per hour, circling the planet in four days (dubbed superrotation), while at the same time is virtually motionless at the surface. Explaining this phenomenon has presented another major challenge offered us by Venus, one not yet answered.
The atmosphere is unlike anything seen on Earth; immense cloud banks of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid cover the planet, not very dense and relatively transparent but incredibly vast, towering up to an altitude of 44 miles from the cloud base at 33 miles. They are concentrated into three discrete layers - each layer with a different mixture of droplet sizes - and separated by relatively clear air between. The nature of the droplets in the lowest cloud layer (called Mode 3 droplets) is uncertain, as they are not spherical in shape, may be crystalline, and appear to contain far more chlorine than sulfur (as well as perhaps other substances).
Grinspoon gave the reader a tour of the surface, from the "continents" of Africa-sized Aphrodite Terra along the equator and Australia-sized Ishtar Terra near the north pole to the wide plains to the great variety of volcanoes on the planet, some of which are probably active. Volcanic landforms cover some 90% of the surface, ranging in size from small shield volcanoes (often less than 12 miles across), so numerous that they gather in clusters of a hundred or so in immense shield fields, to odd six to forty mile across pancake dome volcanoes to still larger ones. Many features appear unique to Venus, such as ticks (volcanoes with flanks scalloped by landslides such that the ridges appear to be the jutting legs of an insect), arachnoids (volcanic domes surrounded by spider-web like patterns of fractures and ridges), and anemonae (volcanoes with petal-like lava flows extending outward from them). Other features include the odd circular coronae and intensely deformed areas called tessera.
Venus has long attracted human attention, as it is the brightest object in the night sky after the full moon. Though the planet was noticed by virtually every human culture, no civilization paid it more mind than the Classic Maya (A.D. 300-900). They felt they owed their very existence to Venus (whom they called Kukulcan) - a debt that they paid back in human sacrifices - and based their entire calendar on the 260-day Venus appearance interval. Mayan astronomers were able to chart the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of Venus in the night skies with incredible accuracy, so much that the Mayan Venus Calendar has an error of only two hours in five hundred years of elapsed time.
The "solid citadel of clouds" that protected Venus from observation made it into a "tabula rasa," a blank slate that was inscribed by the wishes and dreams of observers for centuries. Grinspoon documented the many speculations about Venus being a swamp or ocean world, referencing both the serious speculations of astronomers such as Percival Lowell and the flights of fancy of popular literature and film. So little was known about the planet that even its rate of rotation wasn't resolved until 1962, when Earth-based radar images established that one day on Venus equaled 117 Earth days (and that it rotated in a backward or retrograde direction, with the sun rising in the west and setting in the east). Passive radio observations in 1956 that showed the planet emitting massive amounts of microwave radiation lead to the first real understanding of just how hot Venus was, as researchers began to infer that this was heat radiation from the surface, eventually establishing the surface temperature at 900 degrees Fahrenheit (so hot that an observer on the Venusian surface at night could see thanks to the glowing of the red-hot ground).
I enjoyed his coverage of the Venusian atmosphere the most of anything in the book. Though the planet-wide cloud cover looks basically bright and featureless even from orbit, images taken with ultraviolet filters have revealed that the atmosphere is dynamic and volatile, an intricate and complex swirl of high-contrast, fast-moving tiny splotches and huge, planet-wide streaks. The identity of this material, so dark in theultraviolet portion of the spectrum that its it responsible for absorbing nearly half the solar energy received by Venus, is still unknown and is simply called the unknown ultraviolet absorber. Its existence though has allowed scientists to study and model patterns of atmospheric circulation, an atmosphere that at the upper levels circles the planet at 200 miles per hour, circling the planet in four days (dubbed superrotation), while at the same time is virtually motionless at the surface. Explaining this phenomenon has presented another major challenge offered us by Venus, one not yet answered.
The atmosphere is unlike anything seen on Earth; immense cloud banks of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid cover the planet, not very dense and relatively transparent but incredibly vast, towering up to an altitude of 44 miles from the cloud base at 33 miles. They are concentrated into three discrete layers - each layer with a different mixture of droplet sizes - and separated by relatively clear air between. The nature of the droplets in the lowest cloud layer (called Mode 3 droplets) is uncertain, as they are not spherical in shape, may be crystalline, and appear to contain far more chlorine than sulfur (as well as perhaps other substances).
Grinspoon gave the reader a tour of the surface, from the "continents" of Africa-sized Aphrodite Terra along the equator and Australia-sized Ishtar Terra near the north pole to the wide plains to the great variety of volcanoes on the planet, some of which are probably active. Volcanic landforms cover some 90% of the surface, ranging in size from small shield volcanoes (often less than 12 miles across), so numerous that they gather in clusters of a hundred or so in immense shield fields, to odd six to forty mile across pancake dome volcanoes to still larger ones. Many features appear unique to Venus, such as ticks (volcanoes with flanks scalloped by landslides such that the ridges appear to be the jutting legs of an insect), arachnoids (volcanic domes surrounded by spider-web like patterns of fractures and ridges), and anemonae (volcanoes with petal-like lava flows extending outward from them). Other features include the odd circular coronae and intensely deformed areas called tessera.
December 22, 2010
I think what I liked best about this book is the author's (fleeting but refreshing) attitude of exploration for exploration's sake. Venus' surface is so hot that it glows red in the dark, there's but a trace of water in the atmosphere, and it rains battery acid. We're probably not going to live there anytime soon (besides the fact that we'd be moving 30 percent closer to the life-giving time bomb we orbit)... but we should go nonetheless!
He does spend a good deal of time talking about the historic significance of Venus in various cultures around the world, trying to give the reader an anthropological imperative to care. I just thought it was interesting. Despite its prominence in the cultures of our species and its teasing proximity, it's crazy to think that we couldn't penetrate the dense cloud cover to see the surface of Venus in detail until the early 1990s!
It's very interesting to hear how the Russians actually led our exploration of our "twin planet" during the early Cold War years, before JFK set our sights on human exploration of the moon as the ultimate middle finger to the Ruskies.
As usual, some of the best science we have done as a species had war as an impetus. I guess we'll take what we can get. The sad truth of it all is that nations don't posture by flying space missions anymore, letting researchers ride wave after wave of fear-induced funding. Now governments just cut science funding and spend the money on weapons. Booo!
Later he likens Venus' CO2-saturated atmosphere to a possible future Earth if we continue to plunder this planet, but this environmentalism hook seemed a little perfunctory to me. Ninety percent of the time Grinspoon sounds like a space nerd just excited to be able to talk about planets for a living... and it makes me jealous.
He does spend a good deal of time talking about the historic significance of Venus in various cultures around the world, trying to give the reader an anthropological imperative to care. I just thought it was interesting. Despite its prominence in the cultures of our species and its teasing proximity, it's crazy to think that we couldn't penetrate the dense cloud cover to see the surface of Venus in detail until the early 1990s!
It's very interesting to hear how the Russians actually led our exploration of our "twin planet" during the early Cold War years, before JFK set our sights on human exploration of the moon as the ultimate middle finger to the Ruskies.
As usual, some of the best science we have done as a species had war as an impetus. I guess we'll take what we can get. The sad truth of it all is that nations don't posture by flying space missions anymore, letting researchers ride wave after wave of fear-induced funding. Now governments just cut science funding and spend the money on weapons. Booo!
Later he likens Venus' CO2-saturated atmosphere to a possible future Earth if we continue to plunder this planet, but this environmentalism hook seemed a little perfunctory to me. Ninety percent of the time Grinspoon sounds like a space nerd just excited to be able to talk about planets for a living... and it makes me jealous.
September 13, 2015
I haven't read this in awhile but I wanted to add it to my shelf because it means a lot to me.
I first read Venus Revealed when I was 13. It was the first astronomy book (and indeed the first non-fiction book!) I read cover-to-cover without losing interest and without feeling like most of the information presented was going over my head. It was this book that made me realize that I should read non-fiction more often, and that not all non-fiction was dry and unengaging like my textbooks. It was this book that made me look a little harder for information while I was at the library.
I first read Venus Revealed when I was 13. It was the first astronomy book (and indeed the first non-fiction book!) I read cover-to-cover without losing interest and without feeling like most of the information presented was going over my head. It was this book that made me realize that I should read non-fiction more often, and that not all non-fiction was dry and unengaging like my textbooks. It was this book that made me look a little harder for information while I was at the library.
October 19, 2020
Great overview of not only the scientific understanding of Venus but also its history with man - the myths, the stories, the misconceptions. Very entertaining reading (don't miss the humor in the footnotes) and geared to the layman. Some detailed scientific areas that will satisfy those who know a lot about Venus already and great history of our work to uncover its mysteries. I love astronomy, science, and history - so this was a great reference and overview of Venus - a subject that is bigger now that Phosphene was detected in its atmosphere, but still a subject that is hard to find good books about from someone who was involved in researching the subject. Highly recommended.
March 30, 2022
Taking an educational and entertaining look at our closest planetary neighbor, David Grinspoon utilizes his classroom style of explaining the history and properties of Venus. If you're not famaliar with the subject of Comparative Planetology, you will be by the time you finish.
April 5, 2020
I'm not sure what took me so long to getting around to reading this book, but I am glad that I did. While some of the science has changed since it was published (1997), it is still a great look at the planet Venus and how we have explored it.
My only real complaint is that the reproduction of images in the paperback version is poor. Also, there are many references to the "color" images which aren't color in the paperback version. Worth mentioning in this otherwise good book.
My only real complaint is that the reproduction of images in the paperback version is poor. Also, there are many references to the "color" images which aren't color in the paperback version. Worth mentioning in this otherwise good book.
July 22, 2019
Good review of knowledge derived upto and including the initial Magellan probe findings.
July 12, 2021
This is a well-written planetary science book. The author saves the reader from an endless list of names, referenced technical publications and articles, jargon, and equations and rather engages the reader with plain English descriptions of the fascinating world that is our sister planet, Venus.
September 13, 2016
This was an excellent book describing the history of our sister planet Venus. It explores all of the discoveries we have made up to the Magellan probe. The chapter on Magellan takes us on a detailed tour of the surface of Venus as far as we know. The author writes with intelligence and wit. He is a musician as well as a scientist and this comes across a lot in the book. Not only are there cited quotes from music, there are also some references to songs throughout the book. I was able to find at least 2 of these, one a reference Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and one to the Beatles tune "A Day in the Life." This book has color as well as black and white images of Venus, including surface images as well as cloud cover. I was fascinated by the chapter on the 40 mile thick cloud layer that obscures the surface of Venus. I am looking forward to the latest Venus probe, Akatsuki, which went into orbit around Venus in 2015.
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April 9, 2019Uh, much more technical than I expected - better suited for an audience with more of a planetary science and math background. I'm sure it was good?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews